Case Number 07898

CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL: MOUNT ROCKMORE (VOLUME 4)

The Charge

If you get carried away just because your joke was a little popular,
people won't be faithful to you and stuff, so get a grip! -- Takashi
Kamiyama

Opening Statement

The conclusion of Hiroaki Sakurai's weird, sidesplitting anime adaptation of
Eiji Nonaka's surreal high school manga arrives on DVD from ADV Films.

Facts of the Case

In this fourth volume, Kamiyama, Hayashida, Maeda, Freddie, Gorilla, and
Cromartie Municipal High School's other knuckleheads return for the final six
episodes of the series:

* Episode 21:I'm Takenouchi, too! -- Imposter Takenouchi

It's time for another Cromartie High School field trip. The mighty
Takenouchi has returned from wandering America (see Episode 11 on Cromartie
High School: Hey Dude (Volume 2)). The Imposter Takenouchi is still around,
so now there are two bosses at Cromartie. Kamiyama devises an elaborate system
to determine who among the class is next in line to use their train car's single
restroom. Noboru Yamaguchi -- Destrade High's Year One Boss -- travels to a
family wedding, eager to test his stand-up comedy on his relatives. Kamiyama
fails in his duty to wake his classmates when their train reaches Kyoto.

* Episode 22:I'll say it one more time. Your name is
"Hokuto's Lackey!" -- Hayashida

Hokuto's Lackey considers leaving the Hokuto Corps, but the boys at
Cromartie warn him he'll lose his identity and create chaos at the school if he
does so. Bass High has kidnapped a Cromartie student again, and the boys want
Freddie to lead a rescue attempt. Freddie is useless in the conflict with Bass,
though his deadpan demeanor proves surprisingly effective in the world of
high-powered corporate negotiations.

* Episode 23:A Gorilla at a sushi restaurant. You don't encounter
such an interesting situation very often! -- Yamaguchi

When the other students accuse Kamiyama of having become cold in demeanor,
he schools them on the topic of personal image, and how it is malleable to
context, contrast, and juxtaposition. For example, Hayashida looks like he's
trying hard if he and Kamiyama read books next to one another because it's
generally assumed he isn't as smart as Kamiyama. But when Hayashida and Gorilla
read side by side, suddenly it is Gorilla who appears to be putting forth the
greater effort. The boys are blown away by this revelation. Later, Yamaguchi has
an unsettling encounter with Gorilla at a sushi restaurant.

* Episode 24:Banana sushi! -- Sushi Chef

A visit to the Tsukiji Fish Market reveals Gorilla as a discerning fish
connoisseur. He proves to be a talented sushi chef, and a fine deterrent to a
yakuza loan shark trying to shake down the restaurant's owner. The
yakuza, it turns out, is the sushi chef's son.

* Episode 25:If we clear up these problems one by one like this,
Japan will be a better place, don't you think? -- Imposter Takenouchi

Freddie's horse inspires the boys to start an animal lover's club and bring
their own pets to school. They're dumbfounded, though, when Gorilla brings his
pet monkey. Maeda and the Imposter Takenouchi discuss democracy, economics, and
bath mats. When Kamiyama challenges the idea that Maeda can understand how an
animal feels, Maeda determines to become a cat so he can experience their
feelings first hand.

* Episode 26:I'm surrounded by young ladies from good families who
are like princesses, and I'm at somewhat of a loss. -- Takako Kamiyama

Welcome to Cromartie Girls High School. The series finale plays out as a
Bizarro World remake of the series debut, with a cast of girls taking the place
of our heroes. The young ladies debate who among them is the strongest
princess.

The Evidence

Forget about explaining Cromartie High School's humor; describing it
is difficult enough. It's relentless, bizarre, self-reflexive, as often silly as
bitingly intelligent, and entirely absurd. The show is not an acquired taste; a
viewer will either experience love at first sight or walk away in a quandary.
Those who prefer narrative logic and cohesiveness need not enter because
Cromartie High School is probably best described as a whipsaw of non
sequiturs. Even with a scant running time of 10 minutes (12 if you count the
opening and closing credits), its individual episodes suffer from AADD (that
would be Anime Attention Deficit Disorder). The scattershot nature of the
ultra-brief episodes derives directly from Eiji Nonaka's manga, which is
structured in punchy three- or four-page chapters. Each chapter's biggest laugh
-- its punchline -- often arrives in the final frame.

The good news for fans of the show is that the episodes in this final volume
are as funny as any on the previous releases. As a matter of fact, the
serpentine discussion of Hokuto's Lackey's name and identity in Episode 22, and
Kamiyama's lesson to his fellow reprobates about the relativity of perception as
it regards one's personal image in Episode 23, stand easily among the funniest
bits in the show's entire run. That their crisp-yet-convoluted intelligence is
followed by an episode's worth of Gorilla's silly antics as a sushi chef
couldn't be more Cromartian. To the extent that one can discern an
organizational principle behind Cromartie High School's episodes, it
would be the hard juxtaposition of clashing styles of humor: the fiercely
intelligent with the utterly inane; the incisively self-aware with juvenile
silliness. In that way, it is perhaps an Eastern kin of Monty Python's Flying
Circus. If you're game for its rapid and frequent shifting of comedic gears,
you're not likely to find a funnier anime.

The show's character design is a rock-solid imitation of the illustrations
in the manga. The animation is primitive, but director Hiroaki Sakurai works
cleverly within his limitations by employing a stylized approach which serves as
a constant reminder of the anime's manga origins. Characters slide in and out of
frame as though they're cutouts from the book, and our heroes often appear to be
sitting atop the backgrounds rather than actually inhabiting their world. At
other times, Sakurai employs a more traditional style of animation, with a
quality of movement and frame composition consistent with most other anime
produced for television. The important thing is that the style of the art always
complements the story and the comedy. It's a well-designed, well-executed
anime.

ADV Films' Cromartie High School: Mount Rockmore DVD offers a bang-up
presentation of the episodes. The full frame image is stable, detailed, and free
of video artifacts. Colors are bold and accurate, and blacks are
fully-realized.

Audio comes in two flavors: an English dub in Dolby 5.1 Surround, and the
original Japanese track in two-channel stereo. Both mixes clearly and accurately
reproduce the show's meager audio demands, though the Japanese track offers
better voice performances. There are no explosions or other bombastic aural
events, but the show's energetic music is balanced and crystal clear whichever
audio option is chosen.

As with previous volumes of Cromartie, the packaging is based on the
look and feel of a worn and well-loved vinyl LP. The cover of Volume Four
displays the visages of five of the secondary characters chiseled on Mount
Rushmore, a spot-on imitation of the cover of Deep Purple in Rock.
Inside, the disc itself is printed to look like a tiny vinyl LP.

Supplements are also consistent with those included on the earlier DVDs. The
all-important cultural notes, explaining some of the subtler and more obscure
miscellany that acts as fodder for the episodes' humor, are presented as a
text-based feature on the disc itself. The opening and closing animation is
presented sans rolling credits. Promos for a Japanese special in which episodes
of Cromartie were aired back to back are archived on the disc, as is one
final bumper warning about the show's content (which is spoof more than anything
else -- the show contains no objectionable content). ADV Films has included
trailers for a half-dozen of their other releases, as they always do. Finally,
the package comes with an insert booklet that contains brief character profiles
for Freddie, Gorilla, Pootan, Mechazawa-Bike, Maeda's Mother, Jackson Setouchi,
Akio Takejo, and Kiichi Fujimoto. It also offers a few more pages of cultural
notes.

Closing Statement

Cromartie High School: Mount Rockmore is a winner, worthy of the
previous volumes of the show on DVD. While it's a drag that there are no more
Cromartie DVD releases to look forward to, Episode 26's girl's school
alternate universe makes as fitting and hilarious an end to the series as
possible, bringing us back -- in a way -- to where it all began. Fans of the
show shouldn't hesitate to complete their collections.

Since the series is aggressively episodic and shows little concern for
continuity, the curious could dive into this final volume without much worry
about feeling lost or confused, but they'd still be better served starting at
the beginning.